Search

India has good reasons to be concerned about climate change as it could adversely affect the achievement of vital national development goals related to socio-economic development, human welfare, health, energy availability and use, and infrastructure. The paper attempts to develop a framework for integrated impact assessment and adaptation responses, using a recently built railroad coastal infrastructure asset in India as an example. The framework links climate change variables — temperature, rainfall, sea level rise, extreme events, and other secondary variables — and sustainable development variables — technology, institutions, economic, and other policies. The study indicates that sustainable development variables generally reduce the adverse impacts on the system due to climate change alone, except when they are inadequately applied. The paper concludes that development is a vital variable for integrated impact assessment. Well crafted developmental policies could result in a less-GHG intensive future, enhanced adaptive capacities of communities and systems, and lower impacts due to climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatially widely distributed and temporally protracted Santonian–Campanian stratigraphic records of the Sillakkudi Formation of the Ariyalur Group, Cauvery Basin, southern India represent an onland exposure of a Gilbert‐type delta. Here, we present geochemical, mineralogical, and petrographic analyses of two composite stratigraphic sections, and evaluate the climatic, tectonic, and other factors that contributed to the spatio‐emporal uniqueness of this formation. A range of low to intensive weathering, simultaneous exhumation/erosion, physical transport, and chemical weathering, prevalent at different parts of the source region and or the existence of multiple channels that drained varied source regions and hence varied lithologies at exhumation surfaces which in turn experienced seasonally varied flow conditions were interpreted. The prevalence of physical erosion during the initial stages of the deposition of the Sillakkudi Formation that progressed towards higher intensities of chemical weathering, in tune with the increase in atmospheric temperature and sea‐level rise during the later stages of the formation, is evidenced. Occurrences of positive and negative Eu anomalies and a progression from active to passive tectonic setting of samples, concomitant with change from tectonic control to relative sea‐level and the sediment influx controlled nature of deposition from Santonian–Campanian is recorded. Together, three sets of related factors namely, tectonics, increase of atmospheric temperature and sea‐level rise operated independently, and the enforced transience of transformation of the source terrain from active to passive margin, the transformation of depositional setting from fluvial to estuarine/intertidal to open marine, and shifting of principal loci of deposition from onland to offshore, are documented. The causal link between the progressive increase of sea‐level control over the depositional system during the Santonian–Campanian as recorded by this study could be due to the rise in atmospheric temperature that in turn might have been influenced by the movement of the Indian Plate from low latitudes towards the equatorial region. The second implication of the results is that the studies attempting to document tectonic setting, provenance, and weathering, with the help of geochemical discriminant diagrams, should also consider the spatial and temporal changes in the source area as well as depositional setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study deals with the biostratigraphic framework of Late Cretaceous sediments of the subsurface Well (DNG) "A" (2085–1840 m depth) from the Raghavapuram/Chintalapalli Shale of the Krishna‐Godavari Basin and analyzed the palynological assemblage. The recorded palynological assemblage is dominated by marker dinoflagellate cyst viz. Areoligera coronata, Areoligera senonensis, Heterosphaeridium spinaconjunctum, Nelsoniella aceras, Nelsoniella semireticulata, Odontochitina porifera, Xenascus ceratioides, and Xenascus gochtii species. The last occurrence (LO) of significant species of dinoflagellate cysts is considered for the biostratigraphic establishment. On the basis of dinoflagellate cyst biostratigraphy, the examined sequences correspond to the Santonian‐Campanian age. The dominance of gonyaulacoid dinoflagellate cysts is interpreted in terms of sea‐level fluctuation and other paleoenvironmental signals through this biostratigraphic establishment. The recorded dinoflagellate cysts indicate the outer neritic, cool depositional environment. The sea‐level rise, recorded in our study is linked with the transgressive phase during the Late Cretaceous (Santonian‐Campanian) period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]